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Gestures

Is Android Q Stealing iPhone Navigation Gestures?

In Android 9 Pie, Google introduced a new navigation system. Naturally, it was compared with Apple’s gestures, introduced in the iPhone X. Android’s version might either be too iPhone-like or not enough. For better or worse, Android Q might change that and by change, we mean making its gestures resemble Apple’s even more closely.

There have been equal amounts of resistance and acceptance when it came to Android’s adoption of gesture-based navigation. On the one hand, it throws away one of Android’s identifying features by operating the phone with just one hand. read more

Sign-Language Through Camera Lets Alexa Respond to Gestures

Developer Abhishek Singh, the creator of an app that allows Amazon Alexa to respond to sign language uses a camera-based system to identify gestures and interpret them as text and speech.

Speech recognition is rarely able to pick up the rhythms of deaf users. And a lack of hearing presents a clear challenge to communicating with voice-based assistants.

Singh’s project offers one potential solution, rigging Amazon’s Alexa to respond in text to American Sign Language (ASL).

“If these devices are to become a central way we interact with our homes or perform tasks, then some thought needs to be given to those who cannot hear or speak,” he says. “Seamless design needs to be inclusive in nature.” read more

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